In this week’s /Filmcast, David Chen, Devindra Hardawar, and Adam Quigley ring in their 100th episode by discussing piracy, movie adaptations of plotless games and toys, and the plot/casting of Rian Johnson’s upcoming film, Looper. Rian Johnson joins us for this episode, with his unique banjo stylings and photoshop skills. Rian’s episode of Breaking Bad airs this Sunday on AMC at 10 PM EST.

You can always e-mail us at slashfilmcast(AT)gmail(DOT)com, or call and leave a voicemail at 781-583-1993. Join us next week on Monday night at 9 PM EST / 6 PM PST at Slashfilm’s live page as we review MacGruber.

The nominations for the British Academy Film and Television Awards have been announced and Avatar, The Hurt Locker and An Education have run up the best totals. At eight nominations each it’d be an upset for any of those films to leave empty handed, which is just the kind of set-up that can add a little spice for Awards aficionados. A lot of interest in the BAFTAs in recent years has hinged on their timing, coming earlier than the Oscars. Note that there are a good number of folk who have a vote in both awards, potentially making BAFTA a far better indicator of the moods of the Academy than the Golden Globes, voted for by a few journalists, could ever be.

Avatar, An Education and The Hurt Locker are also three of the five best picture contenders, alongside Precious and Up in the Air. The full list of nominations lurks beyond the break, including some very good news for Duncan Jones’ Moon. There are also some weird kinks in the Dr. Parnassus and District 9 nominations…

As the adage says, if you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all. I have been starting to get highway hypnosis with the sameness of a lot of these Best Of lists for films in 2009, so I was emboldened when asked to come up with a Top 10 Trailers list for 2009 as I haven’t seen a lot of people devoting time to stacking which of them they thought performed their duty exceptionally well.

When I cobbled this list together I essentially, and unscientifically, used some of the same criteria that I use every week for my This Week In Trailers column. I wanted to include a wide swath of various genres (foreign, kids, drama, comedy, action) to show representative samples of what can be done within those arenas; thus, a few solid trailers just couldn’t make the cut.

Because these trailers are usually entry points for the films listed below, some of the challenge of this exercise is trying to “unexperience” watching the eventual film and judge these things based on why they moved me to begin with. It was tough separating what I know now versus what I knew then but, as you will see as my #3 choice, they don’t always have to result in great films. Trailers are always trying to separate you with your money or trying to make the best case why they deserve to be experienced so I hope you enjoy the ones I selected below and leave a comment or two for any trailers you think deserve a special mention.Read More »